Stardate 20021006.2101

(Captain's log): Someone in Germany wrote to me as follows:

Frankly, I don't see why Americans are so angry (or rather why you and George Bush are). What was said was that Germany was opposed to a war in Iraq (which is a general German policy ever since the allies made Germany adopt exactly that policy 50 years ago) and the quote of the one German minister that was never verified as true and taken out of context anyway (I have said worse things in similar circumstances).

If America can't handle criticism, what is that alleged friendship anyway?

No, that's not it. If all Schröder did was to state that he didn't think Germany should be involved in Iraq, then it would be entirely an internal matter for Germany. I have no problem with Germany staying out of it. If I had my way, all the continental Europeans would stay out of it; I don't trust any of them on our flanks when the fighting starts.

Schröder did much more than that. It's not that he doesn't think Germany should fight there, it's that he also thinks that the US should not, and he feels it's his duty, or his privilege, or something, to do his best not merely to keep Germany out of it but to go beyond that to try to prevent us from fighting in Iraq even without Germany help and involvement.

Thus his demands for "consultation" which would go beyond simple briefings, to in practice amount to the US asking Germany and the other nations there for permission which they have no intention to grant. He wants binding consultations because he wants to use them to force us to change our policy.

As to criticism, I don't mind it if it's valid. I get tired of it when all it amounts to is bitching and moaning and attempts to deflect attention away from internal problems by blaming the Yanks. I don't mind being honestly criticized, but I don't like being demonized, and I resent being used as a scapegoat. And I particularly despise it when the primary audience of that criticism is internal, where the intent is to be seen by others in Europe as standing up to America. When the criticism is delivered mostly as posturing and pandering, then I don't find it helpful.

Moreover, criticism can be delivered in multiple ways. It can be delivered in a fashion which indicates respect and concern, or it can be delivered in a way which indicates contempt. In many of these cases it's not the message I resent so much as the mode in which it was delivered. References to "cowboys" and "being unsophisticated" and "simplisme" and a general snobbery are not acceptable.

And finally this: When a message has been delivered, understood, totally and completely comprehended, and rejected, then delivering it again is a pointless waste of time.

We understand that Schröder thinks we shouldn't fight in Iraq. He's made it abundantly clear. We fully understand his message. We completely understand his rationale.

And we don't agree with it, and we're not going to change our minds, and having him continue to deliver the same message, over and over and over, turns what might conceivably have been potentially helpful criticism into a pounding headache. (It makes me wish that I could set up a "delete" filter for Schröder, the way I can in my email program, so that every message he sends gets deleted without my even knowing it arrived. Alas, the real world is not so manageable, and there's no way for me to eliminate Schröder's political spam.)

The comment about Hitler was at best in bad taste, but it's not the core of the problem. There would have been substantial cooling in our relationship even without it, because the real problem here is that at this point it's not clear that there's any benefit at all for us anymore in that "alleged friendship", and that several months of supercilious rhetoric in large part intended for internal consumption demonstrate neither concern nor respect for us.

Let's try something: I think it's pretty clear what the benefits were to both Germany and the US of our alliance and friendship during the Cold War. It remains the case that there's much benefit to be had from bilateral trade, but that's possible without friendship as long as the relationship doesn't degenerate to outright hostility. (We have a very large trading relationship with China, for instance, which is not exactly a good friend.)

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the continued presence of a substantial American military force on German soil had the subtle and rarely-spoken-of continued benefit of "solving the German problem", of helping the other nations around Germany to feel less nervous about the possibility of a resurgence of German militarism. It may be that such a thing is very remote possibility; it may even be essentially impossible. But the consequences of it would be horrible beyond imagination, and it's something that especially France has always had as a gnawing concern for the last fifty years. There was much comfort to be had in the fact that the US was keeping a very potent military force there which would surely oppose any really blatant Germany militarism.

So while the overall benefit of the alliance for Germany went down after the end of the Cold War, it still gains in helping to reduce the suspicion and dread of the nations around it. And we also spend a lot of money because we're there, which affects the local economy in Southern Germany to a nontrivial extent.

Now, what do we get out of it? We keep two of our 12 regular divisions in Germany, and a substantial p